Redskins: Team owner to assist Native Americans

Washington Redskins football team owner Dan Snyder said Monday he's creating a foundation to assist Native American tribes, even as some in that community continue to assert that the name Redskins is offensive.

The move comes after various tribes, U.S. legislators and President Barack Obama in recent months called on Snyder to change the team's name.

"It's not enough to celebrate the values and heritage of Native Americans," Snyder said in a letter to the team's fans. "We must do more."

The letter states the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation will "provide meaningful and measurable resources that provide genuine opportunities" for Native Americans. The announcement did not state whether Snyder will personally donate any money to the foundation and gave no other financial details.

Mary L. Resvaloso, chairwoman of the Torres-Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, told Snyder when he visited her tribe that "there are Native Americans everywhere that 100 percent support the name," the letter adds.

But Suzan Shown Harjo, a major opponent of the name, said Snyder's move was "somewhere between a PR assault and bribery."

Harjo, a leading figure in a long-running case that seeks to strip the Redskins of their federal trademark protection, told The Associated Press that Snyder is showing the "same arrogance" that he has shown when defending the team name.

"I'm glad that he's had a realization that Native Americans have it tough in the United States," said Harjo. "All sorts of people could have told him that and have been trying to tell him that for a long time."

Snyder again gave no indication he plans to change the team's name. He said he believes "even more firmly" the name "captures the best of who we are and who we can be, by staying true to our history and honoring the deep and enduring values our name represents."

Snyder has come under unprecedented pressure to change the name over the last year. Obama told the AP in October he would consider changing the name if he owned the team.

Harjo said the refusal to budge on the name will offset, at least in part, the good that is done with the foundation's money.

"Will [the foundation] do much of anything? No," said Harjo. "But it probably won't hurt, except that it will continue the cycle of negative imaging of Native American people in the public arena."

In the letter, Snyder said he and his staff visited 26 reservations over the last four months. He listed poverty, illness, drug abuse, violence and a lack of basic infrastructure among the problems faced by Native Americans.

"I've listened. I've learned. And frankly, it's heart wrenching," the letter said.

Harjo wondered why Snyder, who has owned the team since 1999, is only just now reaching out to Native Americans.

"It's sort of an admission that he was losing the PR battle," she said. "So now he's gone out to find the real story — as if someone was hiding the real story about pressing needs in Indian country."

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press